AI Pedagogy Project
I am founder and lead of the AI Pedagogy Project (AIPP), a resource aimed at guiding educators in critically engaging with AI tools in their teaching. This initiative is tailored for post-secondary educators in non-technical fields, in order to address the opportunities of and concerns about AI use in the classroom. In early 2023, I noticed that while students were curious and intrigued with the availability of AI tools, educators and administrators were not equally equipped to meet the moment. Particularly in writing-heavy disciplines, there was concern—and confusion—about AI tools like large language models. We took this as an opportunity to build a site for educators to help them consider whether to engage with AI technologies in their teaching, and how to do so critically and creatively.The project offers:
- A searchable collection of educator-designed assignments for integrating AI into syllabi, and doing so responsibly and critically
- Understandable AI concept descriptions designed to outline essential concepts and skills in a streamlined guide
- Recommendations for educators on how to begin their AI journey in the classroom
- An interactive tutorial on using large language models
- A resource list for further AI exploration, including related projects
The AI Pedagogy Project seeks to demystify AI, encouraging critical engagement and creative AI applications in education. It's an evolving platform, designed to adapt alongside AI advancements and their societal impacts, and engage students in analyzing and critically re-imagining the future of this technology. All assignments are adaptable to diverse pedagogical styles and classroom needs. The AI Guide offers a comprehensive introduction for AI novices and those wishing to expand their knowledge.
Public AI Summit
The Public AI Summit was a two-day virtual event in August 2025 for the general public to hear from leading experts about the latest AI developments, gain a clearer understanding of what these changes mean, and learn how we can leverage these tools in our everyday lives. This event was free, open to all, and designed to make AI approachable and relevant for diverse audiences.
The Summit engaged 1,400+ participants in keynote lectures and hands-on, virtual workshops.
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Keynote Speakers
Recordings of the keynote talks are available to the public at: https://publicaisummit.com/#keynotes.“What is AI? AI as Normal Technology”
Arvind Narayanan, Princeton University
“How Does AI Affect Us? The Past, Present, and Future” Kathy Pham, Harvard University
“What Can We Do About (and With) AI? Education as a Case Study”
Maha Bali, American University in Cairo
Anna Mills, College of Marin
Workshops
Presentation slides and other creative documentation from the below workshops are available to the public at: https://publicaisummit.com/#workshops“Writing Prompts for Everyday Life”
Randi Williams, Day of AI
“A Critical Introduction to AI-Generated Images”
Eryk Salvaggio, University of Cambridge
“How AI ‘Learns’: An Introduction to Data Labeling & Taxonomy Design”
Annie Brown, Reliabl
“The Data Behind AI: A Hands-On Workshop on Dataset Documentation”
Kasia Chmielinski, Data Nutrition Project
“Benefit from Your Data While Keeping It Secure”
Mary Gray, Microsoft Research
“Wise Companionship with Artificial Minds”
Olivia Tai, Independent Researcher
“Toward a Serendipity Machine: Supporting Creative Production with Generative AI”
Ziv Epstein, Stanford University
“Coming to an (AI) Agreement: Creating Course and Community Guidance About AI Usage”
Lance Eaton, Northeastern University
“Working with Open-Source LLMs”
Katie Watson Jordan, Meta
Aisha Iqbal, Meta
Dhruv Diddi, Solo Tech
“The Digital You”
Var Shankar, Council on AI Governance
“GenAI Youth Safety Risks and Mitigations”
Lisa Titus, Meta
Leah Treitman, Meta
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Data Nutrition Project
The Data Nutrition Project is a nonprofit that aims to increase transparency in data-driven systems through AI education and easy-to-use products. We believe that technology should help us move forward without mirroring societal biases.The Data Nutrition Project team:
- Creates tools and practices that encourage responsible AI development
- Partners across disciplines to drive broader change
- Builds inclusion and equity into our work
Explore the Dataset Nutrition Label — a standardized “nutrition label” for interrogating the quality and intended use of datasets!
Swimming in a Sea of Invisible Waves
Swimming in a Sea of Invisible Waves is a multimodal project – part art, part science communication, part public engagement – that seeks to understand, demystify, and create designs to visualize the various radio frequency technologies (including wifi, cellular, bluetooth, and satellite) that provide the scaffolding for 21st century information and communication technologies.
The invisibility of technology infrastructures are varied: some are invisible because they are literally out of sight—server farms, submarine cables, and under- or over-ground wiring; this project focuses on those that are invisible because their signals are in the form of radio waves outside of the visible spectrum (the pulsing of bluetooth, the cellular connection via triangulated towers, the wireless signal to a wired router).
This project focuses on the massive amounts of information moving invisibly around us, and supporting our daily lives, our economy, our tech development big and small, and essential to life in the 21st century, while largely either ignored or misunderstood.
Work in progress. Project team includes: Dhriti Vadlakonda, Kathleen Esfahany, Lindsay Saftler, Maggie Chen, Mohsin Yousufi, Rebecca Kilberg, Sabrina Madera, Sonia Sobrino Ralston, Taylor Bledsoe, Zachary Slonsky
How the Light Gets In
An interactive installation highlighting the experiences and wisdom of formerly incarcerated women at the Spencer Museum of Art and Lawrence Public Library.There are fragments of wisdom everywhere.
How the Light Gets In is an interactive art installation in two parts — offered at Lawrence Public Library and the Spencer Museum of Art — and exploring themes of learning and knowledge, chance encounters, and finding wisdom in unexpected places.
Created by Sarah Newman and the metaLAB team and developed in collaboration with Professor Hyunjin Seo and the KU Center for Digital Inclusion, this project builds on the work of Professor Seo and her team with formerly incarcerated women reentering society. Newman and the KU team developed the project through a combination of conversations and creative workshops with these women.
The installation poses questions about who holds knowledge and wisdom and who is situated to teach or transmit that knowledge to others. The work also explores the role of chance, or luck, in a person’s life. The myth that hard work and determination are sufficient for success ignores individuals’ circumstances that are beyond their control. Over the past year, the women in the reentry program participated in workshops and conversations with Newman to contribute their words as the text that is displayed and printed in both sites, and which will intermingle with the reflections of museum-goers and library patrons. In this way, informed by the wisdom of the women in the program as well as of the audience, the exhibition encourages viewers to approach others with compassion, curiosity, and humility.
The installation at the Spencer Museum includes a 360 degree text-based projection of the women’s wisdom projected onto theater scrim, animated and dreamlike, it also includes six alcoves that museum-goers can enter to submit their own knowledge to the expanding corpus of text that mysteriously prints in the gallery ceiling and falls to the floor. One of the alcoves contains a “reading nook” with a selection of books by artists, scholars, and writers on themes of incarceration, oppression, and power.
At the Lawrence Public Library, the exhibit occupies the library atrium, where eight selected texts from the women inscribe the columns of the atrium. The library installation also includes custom designed lighting, an interactive station where library patrons can contribute their own knowledge to the database, and a printer that will print content submitted by the women, by the museum-goers, and by the library patrons. The librarians also have created a special selection of books and media, which will be available in the atrium in the seating area of the exhibition.
Team
Leads: Sarah Newman (art) & Hyunjin Seo (research) Design: Juliana Castro, Sabrina Madera, Sonia Ralston, Jade Wu
Facilitation: Darcey Altschwager, & Annalise Baines Research: Asa Hadley
Tech: Max Lever & Daniel Feist
Sound: Halsey Burgund
Animation & Projection: Antonieta Bocxe & Josh Heckathorn-Lane
Curatorial: Joey Orr, Spencer Museum of Art, Heather Kearns, Lawrence Public Library
Contributors to this work include Agnes Lambert, Audrey, Brittania McKnight, Carol Long, Cassandra Rosine, Cassandra Taylor, Charisa Chairozaim, Jodi R Whitt, JSSV, Kathyrn Skirvin, Kim Gardner, Kitty, LaTisha Fouch, Linda Swopes, Marilyn Chaney, Michelle Prettyman, Phoenix rose from the ashes!, Rebecca Riedel, Sabrena Morgan, Samantha Jo Archer, Sehara A Hays, Sonja M. West, Stacey Johnson, Tameeka Allen, Tamiko Grandison, Tanesha W., Tosh, and additional contributors who chose to remain anonymous.
This project is a collaboration between metaLAB (at) Harvard, the KU Center for Digital Inclusion, the Spencer Museum of Art, and the Lawrence Public Library. It is supported by the National Endowment for the Arts, the Kansas Creative Arts Industries Commission, the Mellon Foundation, and the Linda Inman Bailey Exhibitions Fund.